Medora Von Hoffmann was the daughter of a wealthy New York banker, and was born in 1856. She spoke seven languages, and was an excellent painter and shooter. She was living in Cannes with her parents when she met the Marquis de Mores, who she married in 1882. She had three children, Athenais, Louis, and Paul. She spent summers in Medora, the town her husband named after her, from 1883 to 1886. After the death of her husband in 1896, the Marquise de Mores remained in France, and opened her house to wounded soldiers during World War I. She died of complications of a wound received from nursing soldiers in 1921.